In 1926 Anne Brigman wrote, "I've dreamed of and loved to work with the human figure—to embody it in rocks and trees, to make it part of the elements, not apart from them." Brigman's characteristic subject, the female nude in a landscape, provided people living in an increasingly industrialized society with romantic compositions linking nature with humankind. Brigman frequently photographed in California's Sierra Nevada Mountains and occasionally substituted children for women, their youthful bodies and poses suggesting purity, innocence, and a curiosity about the natural world.

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